UAV Concept Engineer (UAS)

Location: Bedfordshire, United Kingdom

Company

hirify.global is a defence and security company developing solutions in defence, aviation, space, civil security, and autonomous unmanned systems.

What you will do

• Perform conceptual sizing and constraint analysis for new UAV air vehicle platforms, including wing loading, thrust-to-weight, weight closure, mission, and energy sizing.
• Develop parametric air vehicle geometry and drive concepts through aerodynamic, weight, propulsion, mission, stability, and control analyses.
• Produce drag polars, lift curves, weight breakdowns, endurance estimates, static margin, trim, and control-authority outputs.
• Run trade studies, design-space exploration, optimisation, and sensitivity analysis to evaluate many design alternatives rapidly.
• Use flight logs, telemetry, bench tests, and measured aerodynamic and propulsion performance to validate and improve conceptual models.
• Maintain and expand automated concept-design tools, communicate design risks, and contribute to the programme risk register.

Requirements

• Hands-on experience in aircraft or UAV conceptual design, sizing, constraint analysis, mission and energy sizing, and design-point closure.
• Experience with conceptual design tools such as OpenVSP, RCAIDE, AVL, XFLR5, Datcom, or equivalent tools.
• Applied aerodynamics knowledge, including drag build-up, lift curves, and drag polars.
• Strong Python or similar scripting and analysis skills for automation, data processing, and design-tool development.
• Experience synthesising flight-test, telemetry, and other test data to calibrate analytical models.
• Ability to work across geometry, aerodynamics, weights, propulsion, mission performance, stability, and control, with experience in safety-critical, regulated, or defence environments and the ability to gain SC Clearance.

Nice to have

• Structural analysis, FEA, airframe structural sizing, and stability and control analysis.
• Propulsion sizing and integration for electric, hybrid-electric, or gas turbine systems.
• PX4 or ArduPilot, SITL/HITL simulation, and ULog or MAVLink flight-log processing.
• CAD, geometry handling, surface meshing, panel methods, FlightStream, or RANS CFD experience.
• Design-of-experiments experience for subsystems.

Culture & Benefits

• Collaborative work in a small, multidisciplinary Concepts team focused on rapid iteration and practical engineering judgement.
• 30 days of annual leave.
• Workplace pension with an 8% company contribution.
• Private medical insurance, income protection, and death-in-service insurance.
• Up to 5% share matching and enhanced maternity, adoption, and paternity leave.